longed to the people, and without which they found it impossible to live; for the peasantry were at this time in a state of great distress. The Whiteboys levelled the fences at night, whence they first got the name of "levellers." The people suffered also from the exactions of the collectors of tithes for the ministers of the Established Church, payments which the landlords evaded: and they also complained of the excessive rents charged for bogs.

759. The Whiteboys soon passed beyond their original designs, setting themselves up as the redressers of all sorts of grievances; and they committed terrible outrages on those who became obnoxious to them. Sometimes they brought people out of their beds in winter, and immersed them naked up to the chin in a pit of water full of briars.

760. In 1762 a large force was sent against them under the marquis of Drogheda, who fixed his head-quarters at Clogheen in Tipperary. The parish priest, father Nicholas Sheehy, was accused of enrolling Whiteboys, and a reward was offered for his arrest; but he surrendered, was tried in Dublin, and was acquitted. Soon afterwards he was arrested on a charge of murdering one of the witnesses against him he was tried this time in Clonmel, and on the evidence of the same witnesses who had been disbelieved in Dublin, he was convicted and hanged. Father Sheehy asserted his innocence to the last; the people considered him a martyr, and his execution caused fearful excitement.

761. In Ulster there were similar secret associations among the Protestant peasantry, originating in causes of much the same class as those of the south. The first ground of complaint was that every man was forced to give six days' work in the year and six days' work of a horse, for making or repairing roads, which the gentry often turned to their own use, while they themselves contributed nothing.

762. Those who banded together against this were called "Hearts of oak." Another association, the "Hearts of steel," rose in 1769, against unjust and exorbitant rents,

chiefly exacted by middlemen-speculators or "forestallers ”—who took lands from absentee landlords at greatly increased rents, and made their own profit by doubling the rents on the poor tenants.

The "oak boys" and the "steel boys" were quite as merciless as their brethren of the south, and like them, set themselves to redress all sorts of agrarian abuses.

763. The oppression of the northern peasantry by the gentry caused a great emigration of the very flower of the people to New England; and when a little later the war broke out between England and the United States, the most determined and dangerous of the troops who fought against the English were the sturdy expatriated Presbyterians of Ulster, and the descendants of those who had emigrated on account of religious persecution and the destruction of the wool trade (617, 710).

764. There were many other secret societies at this time and for long after, culminating in the later developments of the United Irishmen.

CHAPTER VII.

PROGRESS TOWARDS PARLIAMENTARY INDEPENDENCE.

(1762-1772.)

765. In 1762 a bill was passed in the Irish parliament to enable Catholics to lend money on the security of land: but it was suppressed in England and in the following year it was rejected in the Irish parliament on the ground that it would tend to throw land into the hands of the Catholics.

766. About this time the Patriots, under the powerful lead of Henry Flood, and aided by the growing eloquence

of young Henry Grattan, attacked the pension list, which was a source of great corruption, and had grown to enormous proportions. Many thousands of pounds were given to persons who never had any connexion with Ireland. But these efforts were vain, for the pensions, so far from being abolished, grew year by year.

767. The question of most interest at this time was the duration of parliament. In England the utmost time was seven years in Ireland parliament lasted as long as the king wished; and the preceding one had continued during the entire reign of George II.: thirty-three years.

This state of things led to great abuses; and in 1765 the Patriots introduced a Septennial bill, which was passed in Ireland but suppressed in England.

768. Lord Townsend became lord lieutenant in 1767, and was at first popular from his gay convivial manner and his lavish distribution of favours.

769. Charles Lucas had continued to issue books and pamphlets violently attacking the court party, denouncing Poynings' act, and maintaining the right of Ireland to self-government. The corporation disfranchised him; and as he heard the house of commons were about to prosecute him he retired for a time to England, where he practised with success as a physician. He returned in 1760, and was elected member for Dublin in 1761. He was the founder of the Freeman's Journal, which advocated the rights of the people and boldly upheld liberal principles.

770. Some years after his arrival Lucas and the Patriot party re-introduced the Septennial bill and had it carried (1767); but the term was changed in England to eight years. This "Octennial" bill was accepted by the Irish parliament, and caused great joy in Ireland.

771. As a consequence of the Octennial act it was necessary to elect a new parliament, and the viceroy (lord Townsend) used bribes and corruption everywhere in order to secure a majority for the government. He now became as odious as he was at first popular.

772. But with all his bribery he was not able to induce the individual members to relinquish the right to originate money bills in the commons. In October 1769, the privy council sent over a money bill, which was rejected by the Irish house of commons, as in 1692 (680), "because it had not its origin in that house"; for they maintained the just doctrine that the representatives of the people had alone the right to tax the people.

773. On this, lord Townsend had the commons summoned to the bar of the house of lords, where he lectured them sharply. He then ordered the clerk to enter his protest, which was done in the journal of the lords; but the commons were firm, and would not permit it to be entered in their journals. The excitement in Dublin on this occasion was almost as great as in the time of Wood's halfpence.

774. The viceroy prorogued the parliament now and several times subsequently so as to prevent a meeting till 1771. But he employed the interval in buying over several prominent members of the opposition by places and pensions, among others Sexton Pery, Hely Hutchinson, and lord Loftus. During all this time Dublin teemed with newspapers, letters, pamphlets, ballads, squibs, and satires against Townsend and the government, and the opposition gained in strength and determination.

775. When the house met in 1771, addresses to the viceroy were adopted in both houses. Sixteen of the lords protested, with the duke of Leinster (lately earl of Kildare) at their head. In the Commons it was carried by only a small majority: for the Patriots bitterly opposed it as degrading. Among the opponents were the speaker Ponsonby, Hely Hutchinson, Henry Flood, and Sexton Pery-even though he had got a pension: and the speaker Ponsonby resigned rather than present it. Pery was appointed in his place. But it ought to be said that though Pery accepted pension and place from the govern. ment, he always took the side of the Patriots.

776. All this time the Catholics were absolutely silent

taking no part in political questions: their only desire being to avoid the sharp fangs of the law. Yet there were signs of some faint desire to indulge them a little. In 1771 lord Townsend had an act passed-which had been previously often rejected-enabling a Catholic to take, on long lease, and reclaim 50 acres of bog; which, however, was guarded by the precaution that the bog should not be nearer than a mile to any town or city.

777. But to counterbalance this little favour, which caused great alarm to some, he increased the pension offered to priests who became Protestants (690) from £30 to £40. The witty Dublin people called the additional £10,"Townsend's Golden Drops."

778. The viceroy had one other trial of strength with the parliament. A money bill for supplies was brought forward in 1771, and passed in the Commons, then transmitted to England, in accordance with Poynings' act, and sent back with some alterations. But the Irish commons rejected it, and passed another of their own granting the supplies.

779. Townsend at last grew tired of the sleepless opposition of the Patriots and of the everlasting deluge of hostile literature; so that he resigned in 1772, and was succeeded by Simon earl of Harcourt.

780. Townsend had, during his administration, brought to great perfection the art of corrupting parliament by pensions, places, and titles, to secure a majority for the Court or English party. But this had, on the other hand, the effect of consolidating the patriotic party, and of strengthening their determination to break down the purely English interest, and to have Irish affairs managed solely for the benefit of Ireland.